Avant-garde Health’s 2025 All-Stars Report Reveals the Hospitals and Physicians Leading the Charge in Healthcare Research

The annual report honors influential researchers across 22 medical and surgical specialties whose groundbreaking work significantly impacts clinical practice and patient outcomes

Avant-garde Health today released the 2025 Healthcare Research All-Stars report, honoring the top 5% of America’s physicians and hospitals based on the volume of their research, the quality of the journals they publish in, and their author position.

Published annually, the report highlights the hospitals and physicians who, through research, are driving meaningful innovation and improvement across clinical practice, directly translating into enhanced patient outcomes, more effective treatments, and an ongoing culture of continuous improvement throughout healthcare.

For 2025, Avant-garde Health evaluated published research from more than 424,000 physicians and 4,700 hospitals to determine the most influential and elite researchers and hospitals in the U.S. The report recognizes 489 hospitals and more than 21,000 physician researchers across 22 medical and surgical specialties as the top healthcare researchers in 2025.

The Research All-Stars is the most comprehensive report to highlight the hospitals and physicians that are continuing to drive this progress in their respective fields and across the healthcare system each year. By honoring these individuals, we ensure that breakthroughs continue to emerge, addressing unmet medical needs, and continually raising the bar for care standards across our hospitals and health systems.

“Healthcare research fundamentally changes how we approach patient care—it transforms curiosity and questions into tangible improvements in clinical outcomes,” said Dr. Porter Jones, Chief Medical Officer at Avant-garde Health. “The physicians and hospitals leading this research are remarkable in their ability to challenge conventional wisdom and rigorously evaluate new treatments, technologies, and care delivery methods. Their contributions not only solve immediate healthcare challenges but set new standards that continuously elevate patient care across the entire medical community.”

Key findings from Avant-garde Health’s Research All-Stars report:

• The report highlights a clear contrast in how research productivity relates to clinical workload across medical and surgical specialties. In medical specialties, a reverse relationship is observed - physicians with higher research output tend to carry lighter clinical loads, suggesting a trade-off between academic focus and patient volume. In contrast, surgical specialties show no consistent pattern - research productivity remains relatively steady regardless of clinical workload, indicating that research activities may be more seamlessly embedded within surgical practice.

• The report findings also uncovered significant “geographic clusters” of research excellence concentrated in coastal regions, around the Great Lakes, and within key urban hubs. The top states for physician research included California, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas. These findings carry important implications for hospitals and clinical leaders navigating today’s competitive landscape—especially when it comes to recruiting and retaining top talent. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), the U.S. could face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036—underscoring the growing demand for healthcare providers.

Avant-garde Health’s deep expertise and unwavering commitment to research excellence power the innovation behind its AI-driven analytics platform. Derek Haas founded Avant-garde Health in 2014 based on his work at Harvard Business School with Professors Michael Porter and Robert Kaplan. Avant-garde Health actively collaborates with leading clinicians to publish influential, data-driven research in prestigious journals including Harvard Business Review, The New England Journal of Medicine, and JAMA.

The Avant-garde Health 2025 Research All-Stars include an overall report honoring the top hospitals, in addition to separate reports covering the top physicians by specialty. For the complete list of all Avant-garde Health 2025 Research All-Stars, key findings and report methodology visit: Best Physicians and Hospitals for Healthcare Research.

About Avant-garde Health

Avant-garde Health provides hospitals, surgery centers, and physicians with AI-driven analytics and step-by-step action plans to improve the cost, quality, and efficiency of patient care. Additionally, Avant-garde helps hospitals succeed in bundled payment programs. Avant-garde’s solutions provide granular, actionable data, enabling providers to quickly identify opportunities for operational and financial improvement. To explore Avant-garde Health’s research-driven solutions further, please visit avantgardehealth.com.

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The Avant-garde Health 2025 Healthcare Research All-Stars report honors the top 5% of America’s physicians and hospitals leading the charge in healthcare research